As reported over the weekend by Variety magazine, the two stars of hit UK television comedy Little Britain -- Matt Lucas and David Walliams -- just signed a US movie deal and hence currently have two new Little Britain films on the way, in addition to the US version of their popular British TV show which will air on HBO.

Variety magazine confirmed that the witty UK duo are developing a project with US studio DreamWorks in the US. Meanwhile back in England they are working on a second film project with the British studio Working Title (Hot Fuzz, Atonement, etc.).

The US version of their television show for HBO will be a six-part series will that will air this year on the cable network. The scenario is similar to the production deal that HBO had with Sacha Baron Cohen a few years ago when they produced a US version of his then-popular UK TV show Da Ali G Show (featuring his Borat character) that was adjusted slightly with US audiences in mind.

The new US version of Little Britain, which aired on BBC America in its original form, has been described by its producers as "a sketch show set in contemporary America." In an interview with the BBC, Walliams said that the new HBO version of the TV show will include "some existing characters and writing new material for them, as well as introducing new characters and ideas."

Little Britain, which is available at Amoeba Music on DVD in its original UK TV format, has an interesting history. It started out its life not on TV but as a radio program seven years ago. That led to it becoming a stage show and then the characters went mainstream with their popularity on the BBC TV series that followed. That UK show won them eight Royal Television Society awards, three Baftas and an International Emmy for their stable of funny characters, including Lou and Andy (see clip below when the pair go to the swimming pool -- a sketch that is among the show's most popular).

Ali G is dead! The always amazingly entertaining, over-the-top junglist comic character and star of HBO's Da Ali G Show has been killed off by its creator, British comic genius Sacha Baron Cohen, who simultaneously killed off his even better known character/alter-ego Borat Sagdiyev.

The passing, or rather retiring, of both Ali G and Borat was announced in a British newspaper interview with Baron Cohen a couple of days ago. "When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," the 36-year-old actor-comedian said in Friday's Daily Telegraph.

The good news is that Ali G and Borat are survived by Bruno, Baron Cohen's slightly lesser known but no less over-the-top creation -- the flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter character (with a knack for making people contradict themselves and look foolish), who is reported to be the star of Baron Cohen's in-the-works, next movie, the sequel to his 2006 surprise hit Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
In the meantime Baron Cohen has been spending more and more of his time on his acting career. He plays the singing barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli in Tim Burton's just opened Sweeny Todd (starring Johnny Depp) and in last year's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby he played Will Ferrell's arch rival, the French Formula 1 speed demon Jean Girard. Additionally, he guest-starred in the finale of the fifth season Curb Your Enthusiasm. And more importantly, in perhaps the most challenging part as an actor, he plays the role of Abbie Hoffman in the upcoming biopic on the sixties satirist being directed by Steven Spielberg.

As I waited with my boyfriend, Corey, in the Emergency Room loading dock, nurses, aides, cleaning people and, I think, some illegal immigrants would rush through. The energy was frenetic. It was like someone spliced together all the link and filler scenes from a TV medical drama, and edited out the entertaining parts where you find out the doctor’s sleeping with the wife of the man who runs the hospital who is an alcoholic/pill addict and, even more tragic, votes Republican.

We learned that Corey had appendicitis. They wanted to perform surgery that night. Our plans to play poker and go dancing would, in all likelihood, have to be cancelled.

A cute picture of my boyfriend, Corey

Corey is a self-professed control-freak, and this would reveal itself in many ways. He would grill anyone who entered our room with the same battery of questions, to which he would receive, more or less, the same answers. I didn’t ask why, but I secretly theorized that he was waiting for one of them to “slip up” and say something like, “Well, you may be feeling discomfort because your uterus is over-extended,” to which Corey could then raise his pointed finger and exclaim, “Ah, ha! Got you! I’m a boy and I don’t have a uterus! Because of my hysterectomy last year.”

My boyfriend won’t find that joke funny, but he’s all cripple from surgery, so I’m safe.